Fri, 25 Sep 2009
Twitter deprecates “page” parameter
If you’re using the Perl Net::Twitter module to access the Twitter API’s
friends, followers, friends_ids, or followers_ids methods, you’ll need
to switch from using the page parameter to using the cursor parameter
before 26-Oct-2009.
Here’s how.
Suppose you have paging code, like this:
To use the cursor parameter:
Set the cursor parameter to an intial value of -1. Pass the next_cursor
value from the returned data structure on the next call. Repeat until
next_cursor is zero.
When the cursor parameter is used with the friends and followers
methods, the return value is a HashRef with keys users, next_cursor, and
previous_cursor. The value for users is an ArrayRef of users. When the
cursor parameter is excluded, the return value is just the ArrayRef of
users.
When the cursor parameter is used with the friends_ids and followers_ids
methods, the return value is a HashRef with keys ids, next_cursor, and
previous_cursor. The value for ids is an ArrayRef of user IDs. When the
cursor parameter is excluded, the return value is just the ArrayRef of user
IDs.
Twitter claims this new cursor based paging method is more reliable. It
returns slightly more complex data structure requiring some changes to your
code. It does, however, save one API call when getting all data. With the
page parameter, it was necessary to continue calling the API until an empty
array was returned. Using cursor, the next_cursor value is zero when the
final page is returned.
Twitter plans to silently drop the page parameter beginning
26-Oct-2009. So, update your code soon to avoid unexpected problems.
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